Firsts? Our checkered pasts...

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Agatha Christie was 30 when she published her first book. Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920. Arthur Conan Doyle was 38 in 1887 when he published the first Sherlock Holmes novel-length story, A Study in Scarlet. P. D. James was 42 in 1962 when she published her first novel, Cover her Face.

I was 52 when I published my first book, a mystery I co-authored—Amnesia by G. H. Ephron. By then, I’d completed a masters, a PhD, taught elementary school for 6 years, taught at the college level for about 10, worked as a writer and training designer in high tech for 10, had a freelance writing business for 8. I had a few published essays under my belt and a dead book along with a pile of unpublished short stories in the drawer.

Oh yeah, I had two fantastic daughters and a swell husband with a steady job.

I didn’t get serious about writing fiction until my kids no longer needed their play room and it could be my office (yes, a woman needs a room to write.) And finally I felt I had something to say. Oh, and the savings we needed to take the risk.

I'm now working on my seventeenth book.

How old were you when you published your first book, and what prepared you to do it?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: NOTHING prepared me. And everything, too, after 30 years of being a television reporter and writing new stories every day.

But one day, when I was 55, I had a good idea. And I knew it, as much as we can be certain of anything, I knew it. That turned out to be Prime Time.

I’m now working on book 15.

JENN McKINLAY: I just knew that writing was what I was supposed to do. So, I got a degree in library science (to be surrounded by books!) and started writing at 25. Sold my first romcom at 31 and now at 55, I am penning my 55th book :)

When you know you know.

RHYS BOWEN: My mother told me I wrote my first story when I was four. I spent my childhood playing at being someone else.

I still haven’t gotten over that phase. But I sold my first piece of creative work when I was a studio manager in the BBC drama department, wrote my first play and put it on the desk of the head of drama. They liked it and produced it.

I’ve been pretty much a working author since then in various genres, and now coming up to my fiftieth mystery/historical novel.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I was writing short stories and poetry from my early teens, but it never occurred to me that I could write books that would actually be published. In college I attempted a Regency romance with a friend but we never finished it. (I rewrote all her scenes…) Post graduation, I took a creative writing course, and was so discouraged by the instructor's mean critiques that I didn't attempt anything for another decade.

So it was not until my late thirties that I decided I was going to write a novel, criticism be damned! And I did, with much trial and error, and then I sold it.

A Share in Death was published when I was 41, and I'm now working on my 20th book.

LUCY BURDETTE: I’m a late bloomer too, only started writing fiction in my late 40’s and seeing Six Strokes Under published when I was 50. I was a clinical psychologist before that, so I’m certain that helped prepare me for understanding my characters. I wish I’d thought to start earlier, but I think I wasn’t ready. Instead, I hope to write into old lady-hood.

Meanwhile, boo hiss on writing teachers like Deb’s who discourage beginning writers. I learned when doing the Seascape writers workshop with Hallie that it’s very hard to tell who’s going to “get it” and who isn’t. Mean critiques only squash tender beginners. I had one of those too, and it definitely cost me a couple of years.

HALLIE: So did you find your calling BANG out of school, or did you take a circuitous route? Or maybe you're still on the path, as we all are to some extent.